As usual, western media are deliberately confusing in communicating on the latest Mid-East conflict which eventually led to the recent atrocious bombing of Yemen by the US-directed Saudi alliance, including Qatar and other Gulf monarchies. They are proxies, to be sure, for their Washington masters. My heart is bleeding for Yemen, a country of warm and generous people I got to know well, working with them in the 1990s and early 2000s.

Yemen, like Ukraine, is just another square on the geopolitical chess board which the exceptional nation aims to dominate.

It is certainly true, where ever the US and its NATO cronies put their heavy boots, they create lasting misery and chaos

Israel has been threatening to attack Iran unilaterally for years, including during these negotiations, and they are not above launching a provocation – one that will ignite a conflict that would envelope the entire Middle East and much of the world.

As I said in my last column, the US Congress is the catch, the fly in the ointment that could nix this deal and lead us down the path to another war in the Middle East. Nothing has been signed. What we have is a framework, one that will lead to a fuller agreement in June – if Congress doesn’t step in and stop it.

Southampton University, after giving permission to hold a ground-breaking academic conference on International Law and the State of Israel, has been bullied into cancelling.

“The University claims that it does not have enough resources to mitigate the risks despite a clear statement from the Police confirming that they are able to deal with the protest and ensure the security of the event...."

The university must fulfill its legal obligation to protect free speech and academic discussion...

The closing of this multi-billion-dollar company can be one of the greatest BDS victories yet.

In June, 2010, when Israeli forces attacked unarmed aid ships of the Gaza Freedom Flotilla, killing ten passengers (including one who died this year from injuries), dockworkers around the world refused to unload or load Israeli ships or cargo.

Based on the results in the US, we believe that if ten ports worldwide are closed to Zim, the company’s losses may cause it to close its doors. If Zim and the state of Israel are worried that this movement may become infectious, we can all be proud to spread the virus.

The Senate panel is scheduled to vote on April 14 on the legislation he co-authored with Corker demanding congressional review of an Iran agreement.

Israel lobby influences “the United States’ foreign policy by intervention with certain of their assets within the Senate,”

Harris said if you look at the people who are opposed to normalizing relationships with Iran and lifting the sanctions against the Islamic Republic, “you’ll find that among the biggest campaign contributors are usually AIPAC and other assets that Israel lobby dictates and controls.”

The West worked very hard to turn the Middle East into what it is now. It took centuries to transfigure this culturally deep and great part of the world into the horror show. But it is done!

There is nothing, absolutely nothing right in the Middle East these days. There seems to be no hope left, and no fervor. All that was pure was dragged through filth. All that was great here was stolen or smashed by the outsiders. Enthusiasm had been ridiculed, then drowned, or burned to ashes, or shattered by tanks and missiles.

I wonder if I should tell you about the Zionist/NaZi connections? That they were (are) one and the same? That the "Jewish Holocaust" was really the "Shnorrer Holocaust" (poor Jewish Holocaust): those Jews who were refuseniks against the Zionist cult?

That same occult underpinnings of Zionism, NaZism are the same for Islamofascism, the Muslim Brotherhood (now al Qaeda and ISIS), based in the Cairo Lodge, saved by Allen Dulles and the CIA, removed to Saudi Arabia, after Nasser tried to suppress this heretical Islamic movement?

That Saudi Arabia and Israel are the evil step-brothers in the Rothschild plan to use Israel as the center-piece for the Satanic New World Order centered on the rebuilt Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem atop what is now the Al-Aqsa Mosque?

Since 2002, Congress has set aside $104 billion specifically to rebuild Afghanistan. Of that, $66 billion went to the Pentagon.

Recently, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction asked the military to account for all that spending. It couldn’t. According to a new report from SIGAR, the Pentagon only knows how it spent a third of its reconstruction budget.

The latest Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen, overseen by Washington, has been condemned by Iran, Russia and China.

Both the Arab League and the United Nations have fully transformed themselves into the ill-fated League of Nations that more than 70 years ago disgraced itself into oblivion when it failed to condemn foreign aggressions that eventually led to the cataclysm of World War Two.

As delegates gathered in Egypt’s resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh for the Arab League last weekend, nearly half of its member states were at the same time openly engaged in an aerial blitz on one of the League’s weakest countries – Yemen.

Author’s note: The New York Times’ Room For Debate poses the question “Is Yemen America’s fight?” and asks whether the United States should be involved in regional efforts to fight the Houthis in Yemen.

Here’s my short essay on why the US has no business being there – and why Washington needs to rein in the Saudis before they embroil us all in an even bigger mess.

At the rate the Saudis are escalating, any full-on war in Yemen will cripple the entire Arabian Peninsula, and that would be a disaster for all key U.S. policy interests in the region.

....Americans like their weapons, and they like handing them out as a show of support. But more often than not these weapons end up in the wrong hands: the ones they gave to Iraq are now in the hands of ISIS; the ones they gave to the Ukrainian nationalists have been sold to the Syrian government; the ones they gave to the government in Yemen is now in the hands of the Houthis who recently overthrew it. And so the efficacy of lavish military spending has dwindled too. At some point it may become more efficient to modify the US Treasury printing presses to blast bundles of US dollars in the general direction of the enemy.

With the strategy of “destroying in order to create” no longer viable, but with the blind ambition to still try to prevail everywhere in the world somehow still part of the political culture, all that remains is murder. The main tool of foreign policy becomes political assassination: be it Saddam Hussein, or Muammar Qaddafi, or Slobodan Miloševi?, or Osama bin Laden, or any number of lesser targets, the idea is to simply kill them.

Call it an irony, if you will, but as the Obama administration struggles to slow down or halt its scheduled withdrawal from Afghanistan, newly elected Afghan President Ashraf Ghani is performing a withdrawal operation of his own. He seems to be in the process of trying to sideline the country’s major patron of the last 13 years — and as happened in Iraq after the American invasion and occupation there, Chinese resource companies are again picking up the pieces.

Opium production has been on the rise in Afghanistan over recent years despite US counternarcotics efforts. Infamous mercenary firm, formerly known as Blackwater, has creamed off $569 million from the Pentagon in this unsuccessful drive.

The money the company received from US tax-payers was used for “training, equipment, and logistical support” for Afghan forces engaged in counternarcotics operations. These agencies included the “Afghan National Interdiction Unit, the Ministry of Interior, and the Afghan Border Police,” says a report from The Special Inspector General for Afghan Reconstruction, or SIGAR, cited by the Guardian.

Formerly known as Blackwater, and later rebranded as Academi, the notorious company has been the biggest beneficiary of counternarcotics expenditure in the war-torn country.

Call it an irony, if you will, but as the Obama administration struggles to slow down or halt its scheduled withdrawal from Afghanistan, newly elected Afghan President Ashraf Ghani is performing a withdrawal operation of his own.

In a war full of failures, the US counternarcotics mission in Afghanistan stands out: opiate production has climbed steadily over recent years to reach record-high levels last year. Yet there is a clear winner in the anti-drug effort – not the Afghan people, but the infamous mercenary company formerly known as Blackwater. Statistics released on Tuesday reveal that the rebranded private security firm, known since 2011 as Academi, reaped over half a billion dollars from the futile Defense Department push to eradicate Afghan narcotics, some 32% of the $1.8bn in contracting money the Pentagon has devoted to the job since 2002.
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After routing the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001, the U.S. government began a now 13-year effort to stabilize and develop the country. It has cost taxpayers billions — and some say, achieved little. These stories examine the waste and problems plaguing U.S. reconstruction efforts that, despite the end of combat, will continue to cost billions — even as our military presence shrinks.

All those Zionist ‘wise-guys’ of both genders, who think they have been so clever using their high office to serve Israel, are fooling themselves. More and more citizens are becoming aware that Israel’s espionage, its dictates to the US Congress and its manipulation of Executive powers are harming America. At the present, highly placed Zionist officials hold sway over the Obama Cabinet, but in the future they may find themselves facing charges of being agents of a foreign power, and a threat to US national security. They may find themselves sharing a cell block with Jonathan Pollard!

A Pakistani Woman named Aafia Siddiqui was abducted from a taxi in Karachi, Pakistan along with her 3 children 12 years ago on March 30, 2003. At the time she was vulnerable, recently divorced from an abusive husband; living with her mother; her father had just died of a heart attack. The youngest child was an infant. Following her abduction, Aafia Siddiqui and her children disappeared from view for 5 years. She spent those years in US Black Site prisons in Afghanistan and Pakistan. One can only imagine the torment she suffered there, in a system created to enable the torture and abuse of terrorism suspects. She was a woman alone. They took her children, and threatened them when personal torture was not enough to gain her acquiescence.

Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary for Policy in the Reagan Treasury Department. He could be called the conscience of the Reagan Republicans. The other day in a radio interview Roberts said America has become Murder Incorporated. America has spent trillions of dollars killing millions of Muslims for no rational reason.

You might remember the 7 nations General Wesley Clark said America was to invade beginning with Iraq in 2003. That list came from PNAC (Project for a New American Century) which originally received it from the Israelis. PNAC also received fake intelligence reports on Iraq’s non-existent Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) which they passed onto the White House through the Office for Special Plans in the Pentagon. The OSP was a group created by PNAC for the purpose of getting America to fight a war for Israel in Iraq to do regime change.

This idea that we can run an Empire with military threats, missiles, and economic sanctions is a fallacy.

The Civil War in Yemen is rapidly expanding. We have been forced to close our embassy and military base located there. It is now clear that Obama’s optimism for fighting terrorism in Yemen was misplaced. It hardly sets a standard for dealing with constant conflict and chaos throughout the Middle East.

So far the various factions that we have supported over the years have been poor choices, as usual.

Hopefully someday our government officials will wake up. The counterinsurgency doctrine that was supposed to be the answer to all our military shortcomings is a total failure.

Smith, who heads the Institute for Research: Middle East Policy, reportedly said he thinks this is the first time the US government has officially confirmed that Israel is a nuclear power, a status that Israel has long been widely known to have despite being undeclared.

In a development that has largely been missed by mainstream media, the Pentagon early last month quietly declassified a Department of Defense top-secret document detailing Israel’s nuclear program, a highly covert topic that Israel has never formally announced to avoid a regional nuclear arms race, and which the US until now has respected by remaining silent.

Reality crashed down on those who had hoped the March 17 Knesset elections might lead to a more moderate future Israeli leadership.

The election returns brought the news, Benjamin Netanyahu had won again.

He won in large part by revoking his earlier pledge to support a Palestinian state, and by using last-hour racist warnings to bring out hard right voters.

“Something like scales” must be made to fall from the eyes of the American public which has been endorsing, funding and supporting a brutal military occupation for almost five decades. How will that be accomplished?

God works in mysterious ways, and sometimes She causes scales to fall and opens the eyes of those who do not yet see.

Conference organizers are the American Educational Trust, publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, and the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy.

This unprecedented gathering will focus on the Israel lobby in America. How big is it? How fast has it grown? How interconnected are the organizations and individuals? How much revenue does it raise and where does the money go? What are the common objectives of the lobby? What laws apply to lobbying to benefit a foreign government and are they vigorously enforced? Do coordinated campaign contributions cause American policymakers to act more on behalf of Israel than the United States? What fallacies underlie the assertions that U.S. and Israeli interests are the same? What are the Israel lobby’s public and private, short-and-medium-term policy objectives? And what can Americans who do not believe pro-Israel slogans, activities and policy objectives do?

The US government announced Tuesday that slow withdrawal of of its troops from Afghanistan and remains in that country to 9,800 soldiers by the end of 2015, rather than reduce that number by half, as originally planned.

The White House said changing the timing through a statement, shortly before the joint press conference between President Barack Obama and his counterpart from Afghanistan, Ashraf Gani, who is visiting Washington. During the meeting, President Obama confirmed the news and explained that the number of troops remain there in 2016 will be decided later this year.

Following a request from Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, the US has decided it will effectively stop it's proposed withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan during 2015. Ghani made the request despite the fact that the long military campaign has placed an undue burden on the Afghan people.

The April 10 conference “The Israel Lobby: Is It Good for the US? Is It Good for Israel?” at the National Press Club will present the following panels:

1.0 What Is the Israel Lobby and How Does It Work? 9:00 AM
2.0 Are Critical Voices Silenced? 10:10 AM
3.0 Is Freedom of Speech Encouraged on American Campuses? 11:35 AM
4.0 Is the Lobby Good for Israel? 1:15 PM
5.0 How Does the Lobby Influence Congress? 2:25 PM
6.0 Is There an Iraq-Iran Continuum? 3:50 PM

Find out why neither Egypt was the land of the Israelites’ Exodus nor Palestine their promised land.

“The Zionist paradigm is founded on the distorted story of the Israelites’ Exodus from Egypt and their persecution by the Assyrians and Captivity by Babylonians. But the truth is that the Israelites never set foot in Egypt or Palestine. Actually they never left Ancient Arabia and North Yemen, their origin land, before the Babylonian Captivity”

Despite warnings of its existence and imminent expansion, the military-industrial complex (or military-industrial-congressional complex) remains in operation today. It is an iron triangle that comprises the policy and monetary relationships which exist between legislators, national armed forces, and the arms industry that supports them. These relationships include political contributions, political approval for military spending, lobbying to support bureaucracies, and oversight of the industry.

Ashraf Ghani thanked the United States for what they gave to his country “freedom and hope”

On Monday, March 23 at Camp David (Maryland), country residence of the President of the United States, talks were held between senior representatives of the US administration and the leaders of Afghanistan – President Ashraf Ghani and Prime Minister Abdullah Abdullah.

In the spring of 2010, Afghan officials struck a deal to free an Afghan diplomat held hostage by Al Qaeda. But the price was steep — $5 million — and senior security officials were scrambling to come up with the money.

They first turned to a secret fund that the Central Intelligence Agency bankrolled with monthly cash deliveries to the presidential palace in Kabul, according to several Afghan officials involved in the episode. The Afghan government, they said, had already squirreled away about $1 million from that fund.

Non-interventionist news portal Antiwar.com has accused Google of using “authoritarian” tactics and being “an arm of the US State Dept.,” after it stopped providing adverts on several of its stories, which the tech giant says violate its policy.

The conflict erupted last Sunday, when the tech giant notified the website that its advertising service AdSense would be disabled, due to depictions of “violence” and “gore” next to its ads, in what Antiwar.com said was a “big hit” to its funding. As an example of the violations it listed a 2006 article containing photos of torture from Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq – which Antiwar.com says has been viewed over 2 million times – and urged the administrators to “check all other remaining sites in your account for compliance.”

US should make public the pictures showing abuse of detainees in Iraq and Afghanistan, as determined by a judge after a long legal battle over whether to allow the world to see possibly disturbing images of how the military treated their prisoners.

The verdict of the US District Judge Alvin Hellerstein given two months to the government, which spent a decade fighting to prevent publication, to decide whether to appeal before they can spread the images. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU, for its acronym in English) has long been trying to make public in order that the government take responsibility.

When empires weaken, they don’t merely withdraw. Rather, they leave behind a trail of broken promises and confusion.

When columnist Thomas L. Friedman suggests the U.S. should arm ISIS – thus joining the Saudi-Israeli regional war on Iran and the Shiites – it seems time to question the sanity of U.S. opinion- and policy-makers. But that is where the muddled U.S. post-9/11 strategy has led, explains Daniel Lazare.

The death of Danny Schechter, “the News Dissector,” at age 72 from cancer marks a sad moment for independent journalism. Schechter’s was a strong voice against the empty platitudes and blatant hypocrisies that have come to define modern American media and politics, as he explained in an article last year.

The word “Oligarchy” has finally come home. For years, it was a term only used in connection with those big bad and sleazy Mafioso-type businessmen in Russia. Russia had Oligarchs; we didn’t. That became a big difference between the official narrative of what separated our “land of the free and the home of the brave” from “them” in the post-Soviet period.

The syndrome the Bush administration created in Iraq was what former Pentagon critic Chuck Spinney has called a “self-licking ice cream cone”: the measures to fight the war on terrorism guaranteed more terrorists, which in turn guaranteed the agencies more money to fight the war on terrorism. The same process was at work with respect to torture and drone strikes. It is a great business model for contractors and bureaucratic empire builders, but far less favorable as a national survival strategy.

Why have Western countries only now decided to vote to recognize the state of Palestine? What will be the outcome? Will a legitimate Palestinian state bring peace to the region? Is an Israeli-Palestinian peace plan a dead end?

CrossTalking with Amir Oren and Norman Finkelstein (author of the new book ‘Method and Madness: The Hidden Story of Israel’s Assaults on Gaza’).

Netanyahu's outright rejection of a Palestinian state and his promise to go on building more and more illegal settlements leave Obama without any wriggle room.

“Love him (Netanyahu) or hate him, this is the face of Israel.” That’s how Uriel Heilman concluded an article for the JTA (Jewish Telegraph Agency) on Netanyahu’s election victory after noting that he had shown his true colours by declaring that there would be no Palestinian state while he is in charge. What President Obama now has to decide is whether or not he will allow Netanyahu to remain in charge of American policy for Israel-Palestine.

A lecture by Christopher Bollyn that took place the 25th of May 2014 in Gothenburg Sweden.

Christopher Bollyn is an American journalist who has investigated the events of 9-11. He helped Professor Steven E. Jones in the spring and summer of 2006, when Jones found solid evidence of Thermite in the dust of the Twin Towers. The discovery and discussion of Thermite in the demolition of the World Trade Center led to serious trouble for both Jones and Bollyn. In the end Bollyn had to go into exile.

Christopher Bollyn has written several book on the subject, for example "Solving 9-11: The Deception that Changed the World".

Funds sent by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) US ally Afghan government were used by Kabul to pay a ransom to Al Qaeda, today unveiled the American newspaper The New York Times.
Funds sent by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) US ally Afghan government were used by Kabul to pay a ransom to Al Qaeda, today unveiled the American newspaper The New York Times.

C.I.A. Cash Ended Up in Coffers of Al Qaeda: They first turned to a secret fund that the Central Intelligence Agency bankrolled with monthly cash deliveries to the presidential palace in Kabul, according to several Afghan officials involved in the episode. The Afghan government, they said, had already squirreled away about $1 million from that fund.

Within weeks, that money and $4 million more provided from other countries was handed over to Al Qaeda, replenishing its coffers after a relentless C.I.A. campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan had decimated the militant network’s upper ranks.

“God blessed us with a good amount of money this month,” Atiyah Abd al-Rahman, the group’s general manager, wrote in a letter to Osama bin Laden in June 2010, noting that the cash would be used for weapons and other operational needs.

In the name of 9/11, “wars have been waged, governments overthrown, and an untold number of lives sacrificed.” Yet 9/11 is an unsolved crime of terrorism and mass murder, with no trial and no serious investigation. This elaborately planned criminal deception was carried out “with the intention that the public would be deceived with a false explanation blaming the atrocity on Osama Bin Laden and Al Quaida....”

Christopher Bollyn states he has written “Solving 9-11: the Deception that Changed the World” because he could not remain indifferent and silent...”as the lies about 9/11 were used to wage wars of aggression and transform American into a police state.”

The self-described “Don’t Do Stupid Stuff” Obama administration, with its rambling foreign policy, is driving the real Masters of the Universe who control the current world system absolutely crazy.

A cliffhanger debate will take place this Wednesday at the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Picture Secretary of State John Kerry, new Pentagon supremo Ashton Carter, and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey all testifying in the same room.

The meat of the matter: the House of Cards, sorry, US Congress mulling over what’s the real deal behind the Obama administration’s proposal to use “military force” in Syria, and whether to impose a no-fly zone to protect Syrian “rebels”.

NATO’s Operation Atlantic Resolve paced ahead this week with the latest arrival of more US military forces in the Baltic region.

Under the guise of defending eastern Europe from «Russian aggression», more than 100 Abrams tanks and Bradley armoured personnel carriers rolled into Latvia. Last month, a similar motorised display of military support was deployed in Estonia – in the town of Narva – with American flags flown by the US Army’s Second Calvary Regiment just 300 metres from the Russian border.

It is writing such as this, which illustrates and illuminates the extent of Zionist infiltration in the "Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave," which will drive home to the "American" public what has happened to their "dream, which may eventually stir them to action of some sort to bring it to an end... if anything will!

It is certainly past time to push back against an organization that is brazenly promoting the interests of a foreign government at the expense of the American people.

Shutting Down AIPAC

I would like to concentrate on two issues. First is the nature of the special relationship between Israel and the United States and second is the role of the Israel Lobby and most particularly AIPAC in shaping that relationship.

Iran's FM: I read the American constitution, I believe the– executive has the prerogative over foreign policy and for any foreign government, it has to lead with the executive. That’s the only way you can have international affairs. So I will accept the commitment of the U.S. government, the U.S. administration, about what– going to do. And I will– I mean if they have an agreement, I will hold them accountable.

So, did Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland mislead Congress or just play a propaganda game, asks Robert Parry.

An early skill learned by Official Washington’s neoconservatives, when they were cutting their teeth inside the U.S. government in the 1980s, was how to frame their arguments in the most propagandistic way, so anyone who dared to disagree with any aspect of the presentation seemed unpatriotic or crazy.

During my years at The Associated Press and Newsweek, I dealt with a number of now prominent neocons who were just starting out and mastering these techniques at the knee of top CIA psychological warfare specialist Walter Raymond Jr., who had been transferred to President Ronald Reagan’s National Security Council staff where Raymond oversaw inter-agency task forces that pushed Reagan’s hard-line agenda in Central America and elsewhere.

The ideological arsenal of pretexts for US military interventions are depleted, redundant, spent or thoroughly disgraced.

Is the defence of world heritage sites in Iraq the new «responsibility to protect» (R2P) doctrine to justify Western intervention in the geo-strategically important region? The timing coincides with renewed admonitions from the United States and Saudi Arabia for a coalition of ground forces to defeat the Islamic State network in Iraq and Syria – and just when Iraqi and Syrian forces appear to be decisively pushing back the extremists in both countries.

The US and its Western allies have long used the doctrine of «responsibility to protect» or «R2P» as a flimsy pretext for military intervention.They found success with various tropes, including the «War on Terror», the elimination of «weapons of mass destruction», and the Responsibility to Protect» human rights.

Despite the fact that ISIS is obviously being propped up by Western forces, a recent Pew Research poll discovered that a shocking 63% of Americans support using drone strikes against ISIS, and 47% would like to see a ground invasion of the region. I guess some things never change. History has shown us time and time again, that the vast majority of Americans are so dupable that it would be hilarious if it weren’t so tragic. As the old saying goes, “fool me once” and well…you know the rest.

There is much idle chatter from liberals, leftists and progressives, claiming that Netanyahu’s ‘brazen intervention’would backfire;

There have been times when history has played tricks with man and…has magnified the features of essentially small persons into a parody of greatness--Rabindranath Tagore(on Benito Mussolini)

How is it that the ruler (Benjamin Netanyahu) of a puny country (Israel) of 8.2 million (6.2 million Jews) with the 37th biggest economy (GDP in current prices) in the world dictates war policy and secures the willing submission of the legislature of the largest economy and most powerful military empire in the world?

What significance does Netanyahu’s speech to the US Congress have, beyond the fact that he uses it as a platform to attack the elected President of the US, to denounce US peace negotiations and to demand that Congress adopt policies designed to precipitate a war with Iran?

Westerners live in The Matrix, and the presstitutes keep them there. The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, NPR, and the TV channels perform as agents (as in the Matrix film) actively suppressing any glimmer of factual reality.

Western people have no comprehension of the real reasons for Washington’s murderous interventions in Yugoslavia, Middle East, Afghanistan, Libya, Ukraine, Indonesia, or Latin America. The most transparent lies are fed to people too ignorant to recognize the lies. The lies have cost huge numbers of deaths and injuries and are leading directly to war with Russia and China.

Top Afghan officials have presided over murders, abduction, and other abuses with the tacit backing of their government and its western allies, Human Rights Watch says in a new report.

A grim account of deaths, robbery, rapes and extrajudicial killings, Today We Shall All Die, details a culture of impunity that the rights group says flourished after the fall of the Taliban, driven by the desire for immediate control of security at almost any price.

“The rise of abusive political and criminal networks was not inevitable,” the report said. “Short-term concerns for maintaining a bulwark against the Taliban have undermined aspirations for long-term good governance and respect for human rights in Afghanistan.”

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Your tax dollars at work, folks: doesn't it make you feel proud?!?!?!?

It has been just over a year of growing and escalating crisis in Europe since the Maidan Square protests in Kiev succeeded in toppling Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014.

It saw the likes of US Senator John McCain – a man whose quest for a new Vietnam War never ends – travelling to the country to personally urge on the demonstrators in Kiev alongside Britain’s Catherine Ashton, representing the EU.

Iran has no intention of destroying Israel and has actually saved the Jews three times in history, but the current Israeli regime is a threat to Tehran, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has said.

“Israel threatens to use force against Iran almost on a daily basis… Of course, if they did use force against Iran, we would defend ourselves, as we have done with great sacrifice in the past. But we are not invading, we are not threatening anybody. We have not threatened anybody for 250 years,” the Iranian FM said.

“We never had the bomb. We will never have a bomb. We’re not looking to have a bomb. We do not believe a bomb is in our interest. Whereas [Netanyahu] does have a bomb. He has 200 nuclear weapons,” he said.

An escalation of the conflict in eastern Ukraine benefits no one, least of all Russia. But the principle at stake is one that must be upheld – namely an end to the West dictating orders to the rest of the world and thereby spreading destabilization rather than stability, war instead of peace, and chaos at the expense of respect for international law. Only when the proponents of ‘democratism’, an ideology not to be confused with democracy, understand that the world is not theirs to control will there be an end to the never-ending spiral of conflict that shows no sign of abating anytime soon.

The gross interference by Washington in Britain’s forthcoming election on the vital issue of budgetary priorities clearly demonstrates that British «democracy» is but an appendage to an American leash. And the leash is being yanked to pull the snarling bulldog into line.

In a brazen show of bringing-to-heel in their «special relationship», American political and Pentagon chiefs are openly rebuking the British government to maintain its huge military spend on the NATO alliance – to the possible detriment of already withering public services in austerity-clobbered Britain. The imposition by Washington raises serious questions about the nature of democracy in Britain – the self-proclaimed «Mother of all Parliaments».

The walls are thick and strong beyond imagining, but the elders who sleep in the bowels of Zion know that this rumbling at their foundation marks well their inevitable fall.

The first great stone has hit the ramparts of Zion. The elders within the walls, down in the bowels of the fortress, have sat bolt upright, as they have felt the unmistakable rumbling vibration. Their eyes, which are usually narrow with the self-regard of the power of their own devious cunning, have suddenly gone wide with fear, as instantly they know that the inevitable has arrived upon them.

As another great stone finds the wall, and shakes the very air, these elders fly from their beds with great alarm.
The walls are thick and strong beyond imagining, but the elders who sleep in the bowels of Zion know that this rumbling at their foundation marks well their inevitable fall.

The Nation of Islam's Louis Farrakhan has the organized Jewish community in an uproar after making "anti-Semitic" statements (i.e., truthful statements about Jews, Jewish criminality, the Jewish state of Israel, and Jewish power and influence) during his annual Saviours' Day sermon recently.

According to a press release from the Anti-Defamation League, Farrakhan's powerful speech, in which he correctly identified the Jewish state of Israel and Jewish criminals largely controlling the United States federal government and mainstream mass media as being behind the events of 9/11, once again reaffirmed "his status as the leading anti-Semite in America."

Since the 1979 Iranian revolution and the downfall of the US Puppet Ruler the Shah, Iran has been an Islamic state. In that interval of time, 1979 to the present, Iran has not invaded anyone. Not once. In fact Iran has not launched a war of aggression against another nation in 200 years. War is not their nature. People of all religions live in peace in Iran, even Jews, who find life so comfortable in Iran they refused an offer by the government of Israel to emigrate!

Two things to emerge out of the visit in the weekend to Kabul by the newly appointed US Defence Secretary Ashley Carter are: first, the strong indication that the US military presence in Afghanistan will be, after all, open-ended; and, second, that the Afghan peace process involving the reconciliation with the Taliban is, finally, taking off. No doubt, the two templates are inter-related but all the same each is a stand-alone development, too.

The United States wasted nearly $500,000 on an Afghan police training center that began to fall apart only months after it was built due to shoddy contractor work, according to a watchdog report released Thursday.

The center’s adobe-style brick buildings were supposed to replicate an Afghan village to allow the country’s special police to practice search operations but the roof and walls began “melting” away in the rain four months after it was completed, said the report by John Sopko, Washington’s special inspector general for Afghanistan reconstruction (SIGAR).

At least 26 civilians have been killed and over 40 wounded after Afghan army mortar rockets targeted a wedding party in southern Helmand. Most of the victims are believed to be women and children.

The tragedy happened in a village in Sangin district, which was targeted by artillery fire from three directions, General Mahmoud, deputy commander of the Afghan 215 Corps in the province, told Reuters.

"What we know so far is that our soldiers fired mortar rounds from three outposts but we do not know whether it was intentional," the official said.

Today NATO and the United States "celebrate": the official end to the Afghanistan war, started back in 2001 because Afghanistan was to blame for 9-11 ... no, wait, that was Iraq. Ummm... better make that Syria, Iran, Russia, and China!

But there are still 11,000 US forces still in Afghanistan. Guess what they are doing!

NATO flags were lowered today in Afghanistan, marking what is nominally the “end” of the NATO-led occupation which has lasted over 13 years. Yet the war as such is far from over, despite officials trying to spin it as such.

What is actually happening now is much less significant, a transition from the NATO-led war to a more US-dominated one, with the US planning significant troops to remain through 2024 and beyond, and already agreeing to extend combat missions beyond the “end” of the war.

Webmaster's Commentary:

The US government is never going to leave Afghanistan until, ultimately, as happened with Viet Nam, the people of this country are going to tell the US government that it will no longer tolerate its presence in this country.

This will only happen when the American people wake up to the reality that the US is not in Afghanistan to protect our "freedoms or way of life"; it is in Afghanistan because of the potential for the acquisition of private corporate profit, period, end of discussion.

Afghanistan, geographically, is cursed to be holding the key to very lucrative pipeline routes, which is why the Bush Administration invaded it to begin with; the price the Taliban wanted was considered "too high"; but apparently, the cost of what has become a perpetual war, with the maiming and killing of our military to secure these pipeline routes, was not.

And of course, let's not forget the incredible, massive increase in opium production, since the US/NATO forces invaded and occupied here!

Drawing information from top secret documents spirited away by former NSA analyst Edward Snowden, Der Spiegel reports that the “kill list” used by NATO forces in Afghanistan included low-ranking members of the Taliban along with drug dealers suspected of supporting them.

As the war in Afghanistan draws to a close after 13 years, new information is becoming available describing NATO conduct in the war-torn nation. According to the newly released documents, NATO maintained an extensive list — including up to 750 names at times – of Afghans (found here) slated for death, including mid- and lower-level Taliban operatives along with drug dealers who allegedly supported the insurgents.

Webmaster's Commentary:

I find it very psychologically insightful that extrajudicial assassinations are the primary form of war this President likes to wage.

The Army’s top special operations officer has cleared two Green Berets of wrongdoing in the worst case of “friendly fire” fatalities in the long Afghanistan war.

The deaths of five U.S. soldiers has stirred debate in Washington over the Air Force’s use of strategic B-1B bombers for close air support (CAS) of ground troops. On June 9 a B-1B crew, flying too high to detect signals worn by American forces, dropped two bombs that killed the soldiers and an Afghan sergeant.

Kabul is against Washington's alleged decision to transfer weapons and machinery left from its military mission in Afghanistan to Ukraine, an Afghan presidential administration official told TASS. The issue will be discussed with Obama, he added.

American specialists in Afghanistan are currently preparing US army MRAP (Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected) vehicles to be transferred to Ukraine, according to the information obtained by the Afghan presidential administration. The US combat mission command refuses to discuss the issue with Kabul, saying the White House is in charge, a representative of Ashraf Ghani’s administration told the agency.

Webmaster's Commentary:

IF in fact this report is true, it is a terrible harbinger of what is in store for Eastern Ukraine next year.

The question which must be asked, now, is when this equipment will be transported from Afghanistan to Ukraine. Afghanistan's Ghani will be in Washington for talks about the equipment and US troop strength some time early next year.

Perhaps the quid pro quo here will be the US moving this equipment out of the country in exchange for a much more enhanced US troop strength in Afghanistan, larger by far than the number the US government has already stated.

But were I a betting person, I would not bet that this equipment move will not be delayed much past the State of the Union address, to enable Obama to talk about the degree to which the US government is willing to assist Ukraine against the breakaway Eastern Ukrainian republics, and mention US troops and equipment already there as a fait accompli. If the equipment is moved by air, it is a matter of hours to get it to Ukraine; if by rail or truck, just a matter of days.

For years, the US was wondering what it was going to do with many thousands of war vehicles it shipped to Afghanistan when the drawdown left so many of them in surplus. At times they talked about giving them away, or shredding them.

Instead, 3,100 such vehicles have been sent to Kuwait, where the US is massing them for use in the ever-escalating war against ISIS. Officials simply found another war for them.

The United States transferred four detainees from the Guantánamo Bay prison to Afghanistan late Friday, the Defense Department announced Saturday, fulfilling a request from the new Afghan president, Ashraf Ghani, in what officials here characterized as a show of good will between the United States and the government in Kabul.

The Pentagon's main arm for fighting improvised explosive devices engaged in unauthorized surveillance of U.S. citizens and companies and improperly collected intelligence from Afghan farmers when an analyst posed as a college student, according to an inspector general's report released Thursday.

The intelligence efforts by the Joint IED Defeat Organization — established to fight roadside bombs in Iraq and Afghanistan — were found to violate executive orders and regulations.

2014 marks the deadliest year in Afghanistan for civilians, fighters, and foreigners. The situation has reached a new low as the myth of the Afghan state continues. Thirteen years into America’s longest war, the international community argues that Afghanistan is growing stronger, despite nearly all indicators suggesting otherwise. Most recently, the central government failed (again) to conduct fair and organized elections or demonstrate their sovereignty. Instead, John Kerry flew into the country and arranged new national leadership. The cameras rolled and a unity government was declared. Foreign leaders meeting in London decided on new aid packages and financing for the nascent ‘unity government.’ Within days, the United Nations helped broker a deal to keep foreign forces in the country, while simultaneously President Obama declared the war was ending—even as he increased the number of troops on the ground.

Alexander Prokhanov told Press TV that Mossad is also likely to have transferred some of its spying experiences to the ISIL leadership, adding that Israel’s military advisors could be assisting the Takfiri terrorists.

According to US officials who are declining to be named, President Obama is continuing to advance plans to leave many more US ground troops in occupied Afghanistan in January than the 9,800 that were presented to Americans as the residual training force.

Reports last month suggested this would be the case, with other NATO member nations not coming through with the numbers of troops they’d promised, and President Obama intended to make up the difference with US forces.

Officials say the talks are still going on as far as how many additional US troops will be left in Afghanistan in January. It’s more than just numbers, however, as the US is also expanding its combat role in 2015 above and beyond what they’d originally agreed to in the status of forces deal with the Afghan government.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Translation: the US military is NEVER getting Afghanistan, ever: the profits from opium production, and the off-the-shelf intelligence operations opium production funds, is far too lucrative.

The evidence, according to American officials close to the inquiry, appears to implicate dozens of Afghan officials and businessmen, many of them, like Zakhilwal, among Karzai’s closest advisers, with regulatory responsibilities over the Afghan financial system

Militant leaders from the Islamic State group and al-Qaida gathered at a farm house in northern Syria last week and agreed on a plan to stop fighting each other and work together against their opponents, a high-level Syrian opposition official and a rebel commander have told The Associated Press.

Webmaster's Commentary:

So, to phony front groups created and funded by the United States have "gone rogue" and teamed up to defeat the United States. Great foreign policy!

• BBC ‘They haven’t beaten the Taliban but they haven’t been beaten by the Taliban… it doesn’t look as though the Taliban are coming back’.

In reality, as Helmandis told the New York Times, ‘the Taliban have never been stronger in the province.’ The UK military are fully aware of this, with The Times noting in January 2014 ‘hard-fought territory in southern Afghanistan will fall to the Taliban after British forces withdraw this year, British commanders and military experts believe.’ The report goes on to note there is evidence Afghan soldiers are already patrolling alongside insurgents and quotes a former Special Air Service commander: ‘I will be very surprised if the future Governor of Helmand… is not very closely connected to those who we call the Taliban.’

For all the endless fund-raising appeals and election hyperbole, few progressive politicians want to talk about our biggest foreign policy challenge, the escalation of American involvement in Syria and Iraq. Both Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders voted against training and arming the “moderates” in Syria. But neither have wanted to make an issue of Obama’s military intervention, and few on the left have called for them to do so.

This is sad, but not surprising, as I warned over a year ago in “Don’t Let Hillary Housebreak the New, New Left.” It’s wonderful that voters want more populist domestic policies, and it’s marvelously misleading that the multi-millionaire Clinton is verbally attacking Wall Street billionaires. I don’t think this is what my old comrades had in mind when they talked of class struggle.

A Russian member of the Taliban has made his first appearance in a federal court in Virginia, marking the first time a military detainee from Afghanistan has been brought to the U.S. for trial.

Tuesday’s appearance represents the Obama administration’s latest attempt to show that it can use the criminal court system to deal with terror suspects. His arraignment on 12 charges has been set for Friday morning.

Global News has learned the Canadian government is about to unveil a memorial program to honour veterans of the war in Afghanistan, installing light armoured vehicles, or LAVs, at monuments across the country.

Euro zone manufacturing is in decline. US manufacturing declined. GM is channel stuffing once again to boost sales. US construction is down, showing housing is imploding on itself. First time home buyers collapsed to a 27 year low. Spain wants to impose a Google tax. Those who purchased a policy last year from Obamacare do not want to signup again because of the higher premiums. Canada is banning visas from West Africa. FEMA drill scheduled for Nov for Ebola. Morocco on high alert over terrorist attacks from al-Qaeda. Central bankers pushing Ukraine back into war with the South Eastern people. The Islamic State flowing into Lebanon which allows the US to bomb in this region.

What is Washington's strategy against the Islamic State? Is the Islamic State a creation of the United States? Is the war on terror really a war on Islam? Will the US make amends with Iran in order to defeat the jihadist militants? What is Washington's endgame? CrossTalking with Ken O'Keefe, Majid Rafizadeh, and Peter van Buren.

The 9/11 attacks on the United States undoubtedly benefited a number of actors, including the American military-intelligence complex, Israel, and most definitely, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The Cold War-era, the area of responsibility for which had long been confined to Europe and North America, used the provisions of Article 5 of the NATO Charter – which states that an attack on one member is an attack on all – to extend NATO’s power deep into Eurasia, particularly in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Kyrgyzstan.

After engaging in out-of-area invasions and occupations of Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, and Syria and, again in Iraq, against the «Islamic State,» the «North Atlantic» military bloc has transformed itself from a Cold War defensive alliance into a global offensive axis of nations that acts with or without United Nations authorization.

The “friendly fire” airstrike that killed five American soldiers in Afghanistan on June 9 is the first known case of a battlefield catastrophe that can be linked to automatic defense spending cuts that greatly curtailed prewar training.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Suuuuuuuuuuuuuure. Someone screws up and it's an excuse to ask for more money!

The new NATO chief says the alliance’s goal to prevent Afghanistan from being a safe haven for terrorists has been accomplished. But Afghanistan has never been a terrorist hub argues defense consultant Moeen Raoff in his comments to RT.

Chinese Ambassador to Pakistan Sun Weidong said on Sunday the cooperation among China, Afghanistan and Pakistan would benefit the region and emphasized that building mutual trust and friendly consultations between these countries should be encouraged to promote cooperation.

He made these remarks in his keynote address on the opening day of China-Afghanistan-Pakistan trilateral dialogue here.

A collective regional approach toward countering issues and meeting challenges was emphasized by diplomats, scholars and researchers at the dialogue.

Thanking Pakistan-China Institute Chairman Senator Mushahid Hussain Sayed and German political foundation, Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS), Pakistan, Resident Representative Ronny Heine for jointly organizing the two-day international conference, Ambassador Weidong said both Afghanistan and Pakistan were close neighbouring countries and were good neighbours to China.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Regional dialogue here, to heal some of the wounds, and ratchet down the tensions, is far preferable to the kind of outside intervention (including extrajudicial assassinations) the US military has been providing here, and may form the basis of real cooperation between Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The Afghanistan War is now 13 years old. It's America's longest war, a record no one is celebrating or even really talking about. And while military operations are drawing down, they aren't exactly ending.

Afghanistan's new president, Ashraf Ghani, just signed a deal with the United Sates that would allow 9,800 troops to remain in the country. Military operations will also likely continue in other forms, like the targeted US drone strikes still happening all the time in neighboring Pakistan. And military contractors will continue to be busy. Ten thousands of them are expected to be based at Bagram Airfield, alongside 5,000 US soldiers.

So what have 13 years of war accomplished? Not much if you look at recent events:

Webmaster's Commentary:

The 13 year war in Afghanistan accomplished a lot! The oil companies got their pipeline right-of-way at a bargain basement price. Oil consortium consultant Hamid Karzai got to be the puppet ruler. And whereas the Taliban had eradicated opium production, under US rule a veritable tsunami of heroin is flooding out of Afghanistan and onto the streets of America, making American drug lords rich.

The massive anti-US protests in the wake of the organized book burning at Bagram Air Base were the result of “anti-American provocation” by the Iranian government, according to US officials familiar with the situation.

Webmaster's Commentary:

"Yes, it's true we invaded their country, brought back the opium problem, bombed a lot of places, killed a great many people, tortured some of the rest, and insulted their religion, but really, the Afghani only hate us because Iran MADE them do it!" -- Official White Horse Souse

The Obama Administration’s strategy for the war in Afghanistan centers on a policy of securing an agreement with President Hamid Karzai to keep ground troops in the nation through 2024. At the same time, officials have to keep up the public pretense of an imminent drawdown.

The excuse now, it seems, is “anti-American” sentiment of Pakistan is making the withdrawal inconvenient.

There was a surprising well of political support for the United States in Pakistan, and it has taken over a decade for the Bush and Obama Administrations to successfully burn through it all. Now, the US is so politically untouchable that Pakistani MPs fear nothing so much as being branded an “ally” of the US.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Memo to the Pakistani civilian and military government: the US government is working as hard as it can to destabilize you, and bring in someone more "US-Centric" individuals to lead Pakistan.

I have warned you over the years, after 9/11, that the US government would characterize you, for the consumption of its citizenry, as morphing from friend, to frenemy, to enemy, and that is precisely what seems to be taking place.

The more destabilization you experience, courtesy of US foreign policy, the more the stage is set for the US to come in militarily and "protect you from yourselves, and secure your nuclear weapons." Don't think that such a thing might be possible?!?

"The US has a contingency plan to "snatch-and-grab" Pakistan's nuclear weapons, if and when the President believes they are threat to either America or its interests, a media report has said, amid strains in bilateral ties.

Plans have been drawn up for dealing with worst-case scenarios in Pakistan, NBC news reported quoting current and former US officials, who say that ensuring security of Pakistan's nuclear weapons has long been a high US security priority even before 9/11 terrorist attacks."

Please remember what the "responsibility to protect" looked like from the standpoint of the former Libyan government and Libyan citizens; this is precisely the future the government of Pakistan is looking at becoming realized in the not very distant future.

Dana Loesch, a CNN contributor, made a statement on her radio show that she would "drop trou and do it too." The act she was talking about was joining US Marines to urinate on dead Afghans. Earlier this week a video of US Marines urinating on dead Afghans went viral and caused pandemonium. Most people condemn the actions of the Marines while others applaud their brutal actions. Rick Sanchez, journalist, author and former CNN host, joins us for more.

The White House is in the midst of a strategic review of Afghanistan. This review is coming at a time when the reality is hard to ignore: Afghanistan cannot be won, the cost is escalating at a time when the U.S. economy is in collapse and the war is undermining U.S. national security and the rule of law. It is time to end the war-based foreign policy of the United States.

The new report on Afghanistan notes that NATO seems to be able to control only a handful of “inkspots” across the nation in which they have an overwhelming number of troops, but that the country is by and large uner Taliban control.

The report on Pakistan claims that the Afghan War can only be won if the Pakistani military is able to completely secure all the tribal areas and eliminate all terrorists in those regions, and accuses Pakistan’s government of being unwilling to do that. It is unclear if the document questions whether or not Pakistan’s government is even theoretically able to dominate those regions, which have long been only nominally under their control.

Webmaster's Commentary:

The only people "winning" these wars are the drug lords and the defense contractors.

The United States government has repeatedly stated that the treat from Al-Qaeda against America is very real, and that all action is being taken to eliminate that threat. Nobody in their right mind would question such a serious assessment about a sensitive national security matter from the world's leading democracy. But the truth is that over the past fifty years America's democratic institutions like the press have been weakened, and an elitist National Security State has risen, and taken control over all aspects of government.

The United States government has repeatedly stated that the treat from Al-Qaeda against America is very real, and that all action is being taken to eliminate that threat. Nobody in their right mind would question such a serious assessment about a sensitive national security matter from the world's leading democracy. But the truth is that over the past fifty years America's democratic institutions like the press have been weakened, and an elitist National Security State has risen, and taken control over all aspects of government.

Record death tolls and a really pessimistic Pentagon report delivered to Congress just days ago are old news, according to Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who insisted that the war in Afghanistan is going really well and indeed “exceeded my expectations."

Webmaster's Commentary:

"Going really well", Secretary Gates?

Gate's having made this remark in public gives me grave concern about this man's sanity, and his ability to carry out his responsibilities as the US Secretary of Defense."

The most honest assessment which can be made right now, is that this war is "going really well" for the drug lords and the defense contractors; because it's a damned moral certainty that this almost decade-long war is certainly not "going really well" for the Afghan people!

As the Chalk Leader for my flight home from Afghanistan, I witnessed the following:
When we were on our way back from Afghanistan, we flew out of Baghram Air Field. We went through customs at BAF, full body scanners (no groping), had all of our bags searched, the whole nine yards.
Our first stop was Shannon, Ireland to refuel. After that, we had to stop at Indianapolis, Indiana to drop off about 100 folks from the Indiana National Guard. That’s where the stupid started.

Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates received a sobering update on security in eastern Afghanistan during a visit Tuesday, reflecting the uneven nature of the Obama administration's claims to be making progress in suppressing the Taliban insurgency.

Gates and other officials are in a difficult position, arguing that the troop increase is beginning to show signs of turning around the 9-year-old war but also conceding that stability in Afghanistan, and large-scale withdrawals of U.S. and European forces, may not be possible before 2014.

Webmaster's Commentary:

A classical definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting a different outcome: this is precisely what the US and NATO are doing in Afghanistan, and yet the only thing they seem to be able to continue to do is what has not, cannot, and will not work.

According to a report by Scott Shane, Mark Mazzetti and Dexter Filkins of the New York Times, WikiLeaks exposes how, "From hundreds of diplomatic cables, Afghanistan emerges as a looking-glass land where bribery, extortion and embezzlement are the norm and the honest man is a distinct outlier."

The New York Times report reveals how "…the collection of confidential diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks and made available to a number of publications, offers a fresh sense of its pervasive nature, its overwhelming scale and the dispiriting challenge it poses to American officials who have made shoring up support for the Afghan government a cornerstone of America’s counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan."

A new poll conducted by a myriad of international media outlets, including ABC News, BBC, ARD and the Washington Post showed huge pessimism amongst Afghans, a strong trends moving against support for the US occupation forces and in favor of supporting the insurgency.

The poll shows confidence in the NATO occupation eventually being successful down to only 36 percent, from 48 percent last year, and only 43 percent view the US favorably, the lowest in six years.

Webmaster's Commentary:

IF true, who in their right mind can blame the Afghan people for feeling this way, considering what a horrific mess the US and NATO have made of the occupation?!?

a world away from “Jingle Bell Rock” and Currier & Ives, there is a Dickensian nightmare, where babies are succumbing to the cold, where gruel is being cooked over a fire stoked with garbage, where a father cringes in shame because he cannot even buy his son an apple.

Webmaster's Commentary:

IF the complete destabilization of Afghanistan, and the complete and utter disruption of the lives of noncombatants, were the objectives here, one can well say, "mission accomplished".

USA Todayhttp://www.usatoday.com/news/world/afghanistan/2010-12-06-afghanistan-... is reporting on a poll which shows Afghans are giving increasing legitimacy to acts of violence and resistance to the American and ISAF occupation and counter-insurgency campaign.
-The poll which has a margin of error of 3.5 percentage points found:
- 27% of Afghans see insurgent attacks as justified, up from 8% last year.
-Just 36% of those polled expressed confidence in the U.S. and NATO to bring stability, down by 12 percentage points from last year and down by 31 percentage points since 2006
-The survey also said 73% favor a negotiated settlement with the Taliban, up by 13 percentage points since 2007.

The commanding general of the war in Afghanistan says US victory in the region may not be a "sure thing" after all.

"I don't think there are any sure things in this kind of endeavor," Gen. David Petraeus told ABC's George Stephanopoulos in an interview published Monday morning. "And I wouldn't be honest with you and with the viewers if I didn't convey that."

Webmaster's Commentary:

One has to wonder if General Petraeus isn't setting the American public up for a "Saigon Moment" in Kabul in not too distant future, even though it appears that the US and NATO have agreed to stay in Afghanistan permanently.

A few weeks ago in London, Joe Glenton, a British soldier court-martialled for refusing to fight in Afghanistan, told an anti-war meeting: "I have learnt that the real enemy is not the man in front of you you're pointing your rifle at, but the men behind you and above you telling you to pull the trigger . . . The wheels have fallen off the pro-war bandwagon. If you want to support the soldiers, then bring them back. If you want to help Afghanistan, then liberate it from Britain and the US."

In a unique interview with an official at the highest policy levels of the Pentagon, White House and, eventually, CIA, we are offered a unique “behind the curtains” look at areas of policy making during the period between 1999 and 2007. Extensive notes have been taken of meetings with President Bush and all his top policy advisers. This is only a teaser.

A highly placed source within the White House and CIA confirmed, in an interview, that the invasion of Iran was scheduled for 2006 but planned in 1999. We have heard some of this before but not with so many pieces and, I am told, more to come.

Kourosh Ziabari: There are many unanswered questions regarding the catastrophic attacks of September 11, 2001 about which you’ve written extensively. Several investigative journalists believe that the attacks were an inside job planned by the FBI and perpetrated by Israel or elements connected to Mossad. Former Italian President Francesco Cossiga has categorically expressed that the 9/11 attacks were a joint operation of FBI and Mossad. General Hamid Gul, the former head of Pakistan’s Intelligence Service believes that Israel was behind the attacks, too. What’s your estimation of these theories, their veracity and reliability? Is it demonstrable that the 9/11 attacks were a false flag operation or an inside job?

Why is the American public generally unaware of Israel’s theft of U S military secrets?

The Western media adamantly refuses to report anything critical of Israel.

Gordon Duff, Senior Editor at Veterans Today, observed that “America learned, long ago with the infamous Jonathan Pollard case, that secrets going to Israel end up in the hands of America’s enemies.”

According to Duff, “America’s most vital Cold War defence information, nuclear technology, air defence systems, classified weapons and even NATO defence plans in case of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, all went to Russia as part of an arrangement between the Soviets and Israel. Pollard is doing life in prison for this.”

Given the flow of recent events I felt it might be helpful to make my appreciation of Davutoglu’s approach and achievements available to an American voice.

Over a year ago I published a short profile of the Turkish Foreign Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, in the Turkish daily newspaper, The New Zaman. After the May 31, 2010 flortilla incident involving an Israeli attack on the Freedom Flotilla led by the Turkish passenger ship, Mavi Marmara, Mr. Davutoglu demanded an apology from Israel as the basis for the restoration of normal relations. Along with other Turkish leaders, Davutoglu questioned the Israeli narrative and criticized Israel for its brutal tactics that defied international law and morality.

But the war is being won, at least according to President Obama, and despite all of the clear evidence to the contrary. His high profile visit comes in the wake of the deadliest November on record and ahead of a promised “policy review.”

Don’t expect the review to actually change anything though. Despite record death tolls among US forces and a recent Pentagon report to Congress conceding that the Taliban is still doing fine, President Obama promised on the flight in that the December “review” won’t lead to any changes in war policy.

Webmaster's Commentary:

The soldiers Obama was addressing in this speech know better: and to make such a statement about the "war being won" and "progress" being made belies desperation on the cusp of madness on the part of Obama.

The United States will agree to a demand by Kyrgyz officials that their impoverished country be given a share of lucrative fuel contracts for a critical transit hub here for troops headed to Afghanistan, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Thursday.

Webmaster's Commentary:

This deal is a very clear signal that the US and NATO are planning for indefinite war in Afghanistan.

The aggressive tactics on display in Sangin are exactly the sort that would cause civilian casualties, and this makes the anger amongst locals for their refusal to even investigate such charges all the more understandable. The commander in the district said it was obvious all deaths were the Taliban’s fault and that any tribal elder who claimed the Marines killed a civilian was obviously working for the Taliban.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Apparently, in this phase of the almost decade long war against Afghanistan, the words "protect" and "slaughter" when it comes to Afghan civilians, are interchangeable these days.